


the morning after

by sevenfoxes



Category: Little Women - Louisa May Alcott, Little Women Series - Louisa May Alcott
Genre: (yes this contains actual laurie/jo not just the unrequited stuff from the book), Childhood Romance, F/M, Modern AU, background laurie/amy, i think?!, not as angsty as it seems!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-27
Updated: 2015-01-27
Packaged: 2018-03-09 08:29:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3243038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenfoxes/pseuds/sevenfoxes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Connecticut is cold in the winter; the Atlantic wind is fierce when the earth is tipped this far away from the sun. The horses in the fields are small dots lost in and endless spread of white.</p><p>Laurie's face is tight, bent away from her, into the breeze.  He looks so much older than he is, so much older than she remembers him in this place.  They're standing at the same broken down fence that Laurie had proposed marriage to her at only three years earlier. Now, Jo's eyes drift down to the band of sharp gold stretched across his ring finger, placed there by another March sister.</p><p><i>How did we end up here?</i> he asks. He doesn't look at her when he says it, and it's only when they're back inside the house, Amy's hand slipping into his, that Jo realizes that the question was not for her.</p><p>--</p><p>The most torturous prisons are the ones we build for ourselves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the morning after

**Author's Note:**

  * For [arbitrarily](https://archiveofourown.org/users/arbitrarily/gifts).



> I wrote this a few years ago under a different name. A friend asked me to repost it as it's not online anymore.
> 
> Hilariously, I wrote this with Chris Evans in mind as Laurie long before I got into Marvel fandom. Go figure.

Connecticut is cold in the winter; the Atlantic wind is fierce when the earth is tipped this far away from the sun. The horses in the fields are small dots lost in and endless spread of white.  
  
Laurie's face is tight, bent away from her, into the breeze.  He looks so much older than he is, so much older than she remembers him in this place.  They're standing at the same broken down fence that Laurie had proposed marriage to her at only three years earlier. Now, Jo's eyes drift down to the band of sharp gold stretched across his ring finger, placed there by another March sister.  
  
_How did we end up here?_ he asks. He doesn't look at her when he says it, and it's only when they're back inside the house, Amy's hand slipping into his, that Jo realizes that the question was not for her.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
//  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Jo doesn't remember when they started living on the Laurence estate.  
  
Her first memory is sitting on the bench outside their small farmhouse nestled back behind the derelict paddocks and barns that used to house prized racehorses back in the day. She's wearing her favourite coat - a red button down - and Amy is squealing in her carrier, reaching her hands out as if to grab the light morning mist still hanging low in the air.  
  
Her father's been dead for less than a year, eaten up by a war that Jo won't come to understand for years. Her mother has been taken in by James Laurence, an old acquaintance of Jo's grandmother.  
  
Meg and Beth are sitting on the steps at the side of the porch, chattering away, and her mother is in the doorway, a hand on her hip as she stares into the fields.  
  
_I think it's going to rain,_  her mother says with a slow smile, and Amy lets out a rattled scream.  
  
That's the first memory of this place.  
  
(This house - this land - will come to provide many later, she learns.)  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Theodore Laurence is a year older than her. Jo doesn't like him one little bit.  
  
He comes to the estate when Jo is fourteen. He spends the first few weeks avoiding Jo and her sisters when they play in the large fields, in the rough forest to the east with Hampton, the golden retriever that Mr. Laurence had given them a year ago. But Jo sees him through her bedroom window in the evenings, stalking the land outside their house. He stares right back at her, as if challenging her.  
  
_Be nice to him_ , her mother says, with the same exasperated tone she uses when Beth starts up on the piano too early on Saturday mornings.  _And don't forget to feed the horses before you leave._  
  
He goes to the expensive prep school outside of town that is attended by most of the upper crust boys from New Haven and the surrounding area, an all boys day and boarding school that his grandfather sends him to for an obscene amount of money. Jo and her sisters go to the local public, a perfectly decent school that Jo loves, broken down boiler, old lockers and all. The boys of St. Joseph's are fodder for the gossip mill at Carter Public. This is a town divided by old money lines, the have and have nots. Both sides resentful and distrustful.  
  
He takes to calling at her across the fields, just a  _March!_  hollered into the wind. A few weeks after that, he stands watch a couple yards away as she mucks out the western paddocks. He doesn't say a word, doesn't lift a hand to help, just watches her work.  
  
The next day, he lips off as she's retrieving thrown bell boots from the wet bog near the entrance of the paddock, and Jo punches him right in his big, fat mouth. When she takes off, he's pulling himself out of the mud, his uniform ruined, red tie turned brown with the rich earth gone soggy with the spring rains.  
  
(She spends the rest of the evening secretly panicked that he will tell his grandfather, that Mr. Laurence will throw them out of their house, that she'll have made her family homeless because the stupid Laurence boy wouldn't stop bugging her. Instead, she runs into the two of them the next morning on their way to church. Her mother sucks in a breath and comments on the swollen mess at the corner of his mouth.  
  
_Got thrown into the fence by one of the new fillies. That will be the last time you play in the fields with the horses, now won't it, Theodore?_  
  
She can't help but let the side of her lips tip up in amusement, and when she finally looks up, she finds Laurie smiling too.)  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
On Monday, she finds him waiting by the gate, his jean-clad hip resting against the wood.  His mouth is still swollen and bruised, and he's still smiling.  
  
"Okay," Jo says, and tosses him a lead shank.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Laurie becomes a fixture in the March household, so much so that the long shelf window inside Jo and Beth's room always has a blanket and pillow resting on top of it. Jo wakes most morning expecting to see his long frame filling it, bathed in the light that spills through her window at dawn.  
  
He tells stories that amuse Meg, lets Beth tutor him on the piano even though Jo can tell that he's far more advanced than she, teaches Amy how to sketch the horses properly, how to proportion their canon bones and draw proper withers.  
  
To Jo, Laurie becomes a confidant, and her to him in return.  He sneaks her books out of his grandfather's vast collection, and they talk endlessly about Faulkner and Steinbeck, the well worn pages of shared books between them.  She confesses that she wants to be a writer and he tells her that he's always  wanted to be an actor.  He considers it divulging a great secret, but she's always known, the truth written across his face during his barn loft performances with her, Meg, Beth, and Amy.  
  
(They both know his grandfather is grooming him for a role in the Laurence media empire, but it is a subject around which neither of them venture.  It looms over Laurie like an ominous thundercloud, though.)  
  
For her sixteenth birthday, he gets her a signed first edition of her favourite book,  _The Blind Assassin_.  He gives it to her in the barn while the party is still loud and bright in the March house.  She brushes her fingers against the pages; she need not open the book - she know the words by heart.  
  
_I can't accept this, Laurie._  
  
He smiles at her.  Sometimes she hates it, hates how much it feel like he is deciphering her when he does it, like he can crawl under her skin and possess her, know her thoughts.   _One day you'll write one of these.  Promise me a signed first edition and we're even._  
  
Back at the house, the party is in full swing.  Amy is at the piano with Beth, but when she spots Laurie walk in with Jo, she comes loping over and tugs at his arm until he allows her to lead him away from Jo.  He laughs as he goes, his free hand brushing against Jo's forearm.  
  
Later, she catches their soft conversation by the stairs.  
  
_I always wanted a brother,_  Amy says, and Laurie slips an arm around her shoulder.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
(She is the first to teach Laurie how to catch a horse.  
  
_Hand flat.  Let her see your palm._  
  
His eyes are full of wonder when the mare steps forward and nuzzles his palm.  He listens to Jo's directions, slipping the halter over the mare's head and snapping on the lead shank.  The mare - a stout quarter horse - follows him out of the paddock.  
  
Three days later, Jo returns to her room to find a leather-bound copy of  _The Black Stallion_  under her pillow.)  
  
  
  
  
  
  
_She your girlfriend?_  one of Laurie's friends quips off one day in passing. She's out in the large paddock filling the water trough when Laurie and a gang of the St. Joseph boys come trampling through the grass on their way to the main house.  She snuck out of class a bit early to do her chores before she lost the sun, the days running shorter and shorter with the coming winter, and Laurie looks surprised to see her as they pass through.  
  
He still looks surprised now as the group of them close in on her a bit.  Jo holds her ground, shooting the tall boy in the uniform a look that lets him know exactly how much she cares about his comment and his opinion, turning only to check the water level in the trough.  One of the others in the group, a shorter redhead, reaches out and tries to tug the tall one away by his arm, but he jerks it away, squaring his shoulders with Jo.  
  
The boy sneers a bit and she can feel her hackles start to rise.   _You fucking the help, Teddy?_  
  
Jo drops the hose with a gasp when Laurie lays him out, the sound of Laurie's fist meeting the boy's face so shocking it almost feels like a slap to her own.  
  
It doesn't end there.  As soon as the boy's body hits the ground, Laurie's already halfway on top of him, his elbow bent up and high as he pummels him relentlessly.  
  
_Laurie!_ The next minute is a blur, Jo not in complete control of her body as she surges forward and tries to pull Laurie off the other boy, her fist wrapping into the jacket of his uniform and pulling frantically until Laurie topples back into her legs, the redhead dragging the other boy away.  His face is a bloody mess, splattered with dirt and manure, blood gushing from what Jo is pretty sure is a broken nose.  
  
Later, in the barn, Jo washes out his split knuckles in the sink of the tack room.  She works silently.  
  
_You're not..._  he starts to say, but doesn't finish.  She doesn't look at him.  
  
Jo doesn't see Laurie for two weeks.  
  
(She learns that Mr. Laurence laid down the steepest punishment he could think of for Laurie: two weeks banishment from the March household.)  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
The day Laurie gets his acceptance letter from Harvard, his grandfather invites the March family up to the main house for a celebratory dinner.  He has the staff set out the good china and silverware, napkins on the place settings folded into swans.  Amy looks positively gleeful, even though she doesn't seem to care for the quail, but Meg's eyes are trained on Laurie.  It's only when Jo follows her line of sight that she notices Laurie is staring at her intently.  
  
He finds her in the barn later.  Jo had gone knowing he would follow her.  
  
_So,_ Jo says, leaning back against one of the pillars in the loft.  She's wearing one of Meg's handmade sundresses, a light lacy fabric that feels weird brushing against her thighs.  She's a inch or two shorter than Meg, so the hem rides high against her skin.  A slight tremor shivers along her fingers when she spots Laurie's eyes drift down.   _Harvard._  
  
_I'm not going,_  Laurie says.   _I'm going to New York City in the fall._   When Jo laughs, unable to stop herself, his face grows sharp.   _I'm not kidding, Jo._  
  
She wants to tell him that it's not that she is mocking him, only that she knows him too well to see any outcome other than the inevitable.  As much as he is a dreamer, he is equally as constrained by his sense of duty, of obligation.  Jo has always known which side would be the victor in conflict.  
  
_Can you imagine?_  he asks, his face filled with a lazy wonder, like he's already there.   _The lights of Broadway waiting for us._  
  
He must see the shift in her face when he whispers  _us_ ; he walks closer until the space for retreat, for escape, is gone.   _Come with me, Jo._  
  
She opens her mouth to answer, but Laurie dips his head down before the words come out.  Jo has no doubt that Laurie already knows her answer, knows her well enough to understand that she would never leave school to run off with him, that as much as he is constrained by obligation, she is constrained by realism and willfulness, that their dreams, while similar in goal, have always seemed to share different trajectories.  
  
So Jo lets him kiss her, lets her hands drop until they rest on his chest, feeling the frantic beat of his heart and push and pull of his lungs, ragged in their search for air.  He runs a hand over her face until it is resting on her jaw as the other slides down her body.  He slips his hand under the too-short hem of her skirt and cups the space between her legs gently.  Her mind suddenly shifts to the way Laurie had touched that mare for the first time, the same look of wonder on his face, just the edge of fear, like the wrong move would spook her, send her fleeing into the fields.  
  
When Laurie lays her down on the blanket they used to use for a stage in their performances, she lifts her hips and lets him drag down her panties.  
  
(In the morning, she finds the blood stains on Meg's dress.  She folds it between old editions of  _The New York Times_  and shoves it into the back of her closet.)  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
In August, Laurie runs off to New York City.  
  
He comes back a week later.  He catches his flight to Boston on time.  
  
(Jo goes with him to the airport.  Beth rides along in the town car that Mr. Laurence has drive them to the airport.  
  
Laurie stands in front of security as Beth steps forward and gives him a gentle hug, tells him to write to her.  Always the intuitive one, Beth turns and walks back to the car, leaving the two of them in the busy rush of the airport.  
  
_New York will still be there_ , Jo says with a sigh as Laurie snugs an arm around her lower back, bringing her in to him.  He doesn't say anything, just kisses her once before turning on his heel and walking toward the row of metal detectors in the distance.  
  
It's only when she gets back from the airport that she finds the letter he left before leaving for New York City.  Inside, she finds four hundred dollars and an address.  The only message inside is a quickly scribbled  _I'll wait for you._ )  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Jo gets into Harvard and Columbia.  
  
Laurie looks at her with more anger than she thought possible when she tells him it's Columbia. She snakes her hand away from him and runs it through her hair.  
  
_You did tell me that the lights of Broadway were waiting for me_ , she says sharply, and the look of betrayal he shoots her makes her throat tighten painfully.  
  
(He returns to Harvard in the fall without saying goodbye to her.  She doesn't hear from him in three months, but at the end of November, she comes back from class to find him waiting for her at her dorm room door.  
  
There's no apology, but then again, she neither expected nor wanted one.  Instead, she brings him into her bed, brings his weight between her legs and his mouth onto her own.  It frightens her the way this knowledge of him is beginning to replace the ways in which she used to know him.  
  
_This city suits you,_  Laurie says, tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear.  
  
They go out to see a play every night, eat out at hole-in-the-wall restaurants with viciously good pad thai and alu gobi, wander the streets until the sun comes up and sleep until it sets.  This is the time that Jo will remember as being the happiest with Laurie.  
  
A week later, watching Laurie climb into the cab heading to LaGuardia, she knows it will not last.)  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
_Amy's still in London.  They've offered her a place with the English National Ballet Company.  I think she's going to take it,_  Meg says.   _You still liking Columbia?_  
  
Jo nods, speaking up only when she remembers that Meg can't see her.  The phone is resting against her shoulder in the small office at the back of the coffee shop she works at on campus.  Her scholarship covers most of her expenses - she works at  _The Beanerie_ for some extra cash to help feed what her new roommate has come to call her "book fetish".  She listens to her sister talk about the goings on at the farm, about how the babies are in their sixth month now, how she can feel them kicking inside of her like a Brazilian soccer team.  
  
Jo has never felt so homesick in her life.  
  
_Have you heard from Laurie lately?_  
  
She knows that if she checks her phone, she will find missed calls from Laurie, a few voicemail messages that she won't return.  He's in his final year at Harvard.  Her sisters have no idea she's fucked Laurie, that she's felt him inside of her, that they've been carrying on whatever it is they've wrapped themselves into for almost four years.  
  
_No._  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
It comes in the summer after Laurie graduates, the summer before her final year at Columbia.   
  
The broken wood of the fence bites into her palms as Laurie lays out his plan, explains that his grandfather has offered him a position in London as a senior editor at  _The Times._  That he wants her to come with him, that he wants to marry her.  There's a velvet box in his coat pocket that he hasn't taken out, but Jo can see enough of it to know what is inside.  
  
_You wouldn't have to write_ , Laurie says, one of his hand drifting over hers.   _Unless you wanted to._  
  
It's this moment that Jo realizes how far their childish love has stretched, how far their trajectories have deviated, how they have grown apart.  She thinks about the silly girls in college that she has known, the girls who have given up their dreams, the things that make them who they are for a boy.  She thinks about the things that Laurie has given up to make other people happy, how he's learned to trade his happiness for obligation and loyalty.  She thinks about how much she would trade to see him truly happy again and about how the steepest prices are almost always shared.  
  
She finds the words.  
  
_You want to keep me,_  Jo says, and Laurie's face goes ghost white.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
It's a year and a half before Jo sees or hears from Laurie again.   
  
In the winter, a drunk driver hits Beth's car as she's driving home from work.  She dies on impact.  
  
When Amy returns home from London for the funeral, she's wearing a diamond ring on her finger and Laurie on her arm.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
At the engagement party, Laurie finds her.  He's been drinking, but he's not drunk.  They're at the main house, the elegant halls draped with decorations and milling people.  Jo doesn't know any of them.  
  
This room used to be Laurie's.  In the baseboard near the window, she can see small JM and TL he carved into the wood.  It feel like a million miles and a thousand lifetimes ago.  
  
_Tell me not to do it,_  he says.  _Tell me not to do it and I won't._  
  
All Jo feels is the heat of anger behind her eyes.  She has kept the building fury inside of her for months, bleeding it out onto paper, writing furiously in her own childhood bedroom.   _Did you even bother getting another ring, or did you just give her the one you got for me?  
  
I was never going to be good enough for you.  _ Laurie looks completely sober as he says this, his hands clenched into fists.   _I just wanted to be a part of your life.  I just wanted to be a March._  
  
Jo shakes her head, unwilling to listen to his reasoning.   _Have you told your _fiancée_  that you've fucked her sister?  
  
Have you?  _There's fury in his eyes now, too.   _You never told them.  All those years, you never told them._  
  
_Fuck you, Laurie_ , she says sharply.  She lets the door slam in its frame after she walks through it.  
  
(Her sister gets married on a Saturday in June.  Jo is her maid of honour.  They get married on the estate, in the eastern fields near the forest.  
  
_You hurt my sister and I will never forgive you_ , Jo says, and the look on Laurie's face is unlike anything she's ever seen before.  
  
The most torturous prisons, she thinks, are the ones we build for ourselves.)  
  
  
  
  
  
  
\\\  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
When the house has gone quiet, she finds him in the barn.  She still remembers the question he had asked by the fence.  
  
_Maybe I wanted you because I knew I could never have you_ , he says.  The barn isn't heated, the bite of frost in the air, but the horses below bleed body heat into the space enough that is warmer than the frigid air outside.  He cracks a smile, but it isn't like the one he used to flash her, the one that let her know he knew exactly what she was thinking.   _Seems to be my lot in life.  
  
I just wanted to be your Laurie.  That's it.  _ His voice sounds defeated, and he lifts his hands palm out, shaking his head in unison.   _That's it.  I could deal with the rest of it.  I didn't need to be in New York, I didn't need...  I just needed this._  
  
_You're my sister's husband,_ Jo says, her back pressed up against the pillar near the middle of the loft.  She has finally begun to accept that they are both responsible for this, that betrayal has become the connection between them.   _You're not my Laurie anymore._  
  
Laurie raises his eyes up, and for the first time in years, she sees the old Laurie, the Laurie she first met, the Laurie with dreams, with a spirit that hadn't been stripped away by obligation and expectations.  
  
_You're wrong_ , he says.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Jo finishes her first novel in the spring.  
  
She puts the signed first edition in the mail.


End file.
